What has REALLY occurred with the budget deficit during Obama’s term of office?

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Thanks to blogger WCG, we have an in-depth comparison between what the Republicans have claimed and what the truth is.  
See Obama's "unprecedented massive deficits" in which WCG dissects the Republican claims:
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I [WCG] received the link to the above graph, which is courtesy of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank, from a commenter on a previous post, where I'd discussed the consequences of the Republicans' "Southern strategy" of deliberately wooing white racists.

We had an interesting discussion there, so I thought I'd take this link and his argument seriously and write a follow-up post. His idea, much of which is taken from that Heritage Foundation post, is that Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, instead quadrupled it, that he's vastly increased spending, and that, basically, "it really comes down to Republicans wanting small government and Democrats wanting large government."

OK, that's a lot to investigate. I'm no expert, and I'm particularly short of time right now. Plus, it's hard - without making this my life's work - to find exactly comparable data online. But I think I can at least raise a few questions about this.

First, let's look at that Heritage Foundation article, Bush Deficit vs Obama Deficit in Pictures. The article was published March 24, 2009. Barack Obama had been in office two months. Yes, two months! And the Heritage Foundation was already complaining about "Obama's unprecedented massive deficits."

You don't think this was all about politics? We weren't even halfway through fiscal year 2009 yet, the year which started before Obama took office, the last year budgeted by Bush. Barack Obama's first budget was for FY 2010. That graph above (which is three years old now) was deliberately misleading. It was partisan politics and nothing but partisan politics.

[snipped.  Please see the blog item at the link above for all the supporting information and graphs.]

But the right-wing loons who are willing to bankrupt America, just to force smaller government on us, well, I think that's treason. Grover Norquist and his pals may want to drown America in a bathtub, but I'll defend my country from fanatics like that. And so should any reasonable person.

Unfortunately, ill-informed people listen to Fox "News" and believe whatever they hear. I hate to break it to you, but Fox lies. Republican leaders lie. They may think they have a good reason to lie, because they really, really want to put Republicans back in power again, but it's still a lie. (This is that whole idea that the end justifies the means. Well, it doesn't. Most of the time, in fact, the means is far more important than the end.)

And these are the same people who have nearly destroyed our country in recent years. They're the same people who got us into two unnecessary wars, one against a completely innocent country, for no reason whatsoever. (Barack Obama showed us how we should have gone after Osama bin Laden in the first place.)

They're the same people who gave us record-breaking budget deficits, not to invest in America, not to invest in education, research and development, or infrastructure, but simply to give tax cuts to the wealthy. They're the reason why American workers had it better in the 1970s than today. They're the reason why wealth and income inequality have skyrocketed. They're anti-science. Heck, they're anti-education.

Don't get me started. :)  Listen to them if you wish. But for chrissake, don't listen just to them, no matter how plausible they sound.

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